While no historians or major political leaders in Australia would contend that Australia's colonial period was undertaken without a degree of violence or dispossession, the Australian debate often concerns the extent to which the history of European colonisation post-1788 and government administration since Federation in 1901 may be characterised as having been:

marked by relatively minor conflict between European colonists and Indigenous Australians, and generally lacking in events that might be termed 'invasion', 'warfare', 'guerrilla warfare', 'conquest' or 'genocide', and generally marked instead by humane intent by government authorities, with damage to indigenous people largely attributable to unintended factors (such as the spread of new diseases) rather than to malicious policies;

or whether the settlement of Australia constituted an invasion marked by violent conflict at the frontier, guerrilla warfare (or other forms of warfare) between Europeans and Aborigines, involving frequent or significant massacres of Aboriginal peoples engaged in defending their traditional tribal lands; a situation which can be said to have developed either nationally, or in certain areas, into something like a war of 'extermination' or something which accords with the term genocide as a consequence of British imperialism and colonialism involving continued dispossession, exploitation, ill treatment and cultural genocide.

The history wars also relates to broader themes concerning national identity, as well as methodological questions concerning the historian and the craft of researching and writing history, including issues such as the value and reliability of written records (of the authorities and settlers) and the oral tradition (of the Indigenous Australians), along with the political or similar ideological biases of those who interpret them.

In 1968 Professor W. E. H. "Bill" Stanner, an Australian anthropologist, coined the term the "Great Australian Silence" in a Boyer Lecture entitled "After the Dreaming",[2] where he argued that the writing of Australian history was incomplete. He asserted that Australian national history as documented up to that point had largely been presented in a positive light, but that Indigenous Australians had been virtually ignored. He saw this as a structural and deliberate process to omit "several hundred thousand Aborigines who lived and died between 1788 and 1938… (who were but) … negative facts of history and … were in no way consequential for the modern period".[3] A new strand of Australian historiography subsequently emerged which gave much greater attention to the negative experiences of Indigenous Australians during the British settlement of Australia. In the 1970s and 1980s, historians such as Manning Clark and Henry Reynolds published work which they saw as correcting a selective historiography that had misrepresented or ignored Indigenous Australian history. The historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in the literary and political journal Quadrant in 1993 that the telling of Australian history had moved from an unduly positive rendition (the "Three Cheers View") to an unduly negative view (The "'black armband'") and Australian commentators and politicians have continued to debate this subject.

Two Australian Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, were major participants in the "wars". According to the analysis for the Australian Parliamentary Library of Dr Mark McKenna,[9]Paul Keating (1991–1996) was believed by John Howard (1996–2007) to portray Australia pre-Whitlam in an unduly negative light; while Keating sought to distance the modern Labor movement from its historical support for the Monarchy and the White Australia policy by arguing that it was the Conservative Australian Parties who had been barriers to national progress and excessively loyal to the British Empire. He accused Britain of having abandoned Australia during World War II. Keating was a staunch advocate of a symbolic apology to indigenous people for the misdeeds of past governments, and outlined his view of the origins and potential solutions to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage in his Redfern Park Speech (drafted with the assistance of historian Don Watson). In 1999, following the release of the 1998 Bringing Them Home Report, Howard passed a Parliamentary Motion of Reconciliation describing treatment of Aborigines as the "most blemished chapter" in Australian history, but he did not make a Parliamentary apology.[10] Howard argued that an apology was inappropriate as it would imply "intergeneration guilt" and said that "practical" measures were a better response to contemporary Aboriginal disadvantage. Keating has argued for the eradication of remaining symbols linked to British origins: including deference for ANZAC Day, the Australian Flag and the Monarchy in Australia, while Howard was a supporter of these institutions. Unlike fellow Labor leaders and contemporaries, Bob Hawke and Kim Beazley, Keating never traveled to Gallipoli for ANZAC Day ceremonies. In 2008 he described those who gathered there as "misguided".[11]

In 2006, John Howard said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of Quadrant that "Political Correctness" was dead in Australia but: "we should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's universities"; and in 2006, Sydney Morning Herald Political Editor Peter Hartcher reported that Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd was entering the philosophical debate by arguing in response that "John Howard, is guilty of perpetrating 'a fraud' in his so-called culture wars... designed not to make real change but to mask the damage inflicted by the Government's economic policies".[12]

The defeat of the Howard government in the Australian Federal election of 2007, and its replacement by the Rudd Labor government has altered the dynamic of the debate. Rudd made an official apology to the Stolen Generation[13] with bi-partisan support.[14] Like Keating, Rudd supports an Australian Republic, but in contrast to Keating, Rudd has declared support for the Australian flag and supports the commemoration of ANZAC Day and expressed admiration for Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies.[15][16]

Since the change of government, and the passage, with support from all parties, of a Parliamentary apology to indigenous Australians, Professor of Australian Studies Richard Nile has argued: "the culture and history wars are over and with them should also go the adversarial nature of intellectual debate",[17] a view contested by others, including conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen.[18] An intention to reengage in the history wars has been indicated by the Federal Opposition's Christopher Pyne.[19]

The black armband debate concerns whether or not accounts of Australian history gravitate towards an overly negative or an overly positive point of view. The black armband view of history was a phrase first used by Australian historianGeoffrey Blainey in his 1993 Sir John Latham Memorial Lecture to describe views of history which, he believed, posited that "much of [pre-multicultural] Australian history had been a disgrace" and which focused mainly on the treatment of minority groups (especially Aborigines). This he contrasted with the 'Three Cheers' view, according to which: "nearly everything that came after [the convict era] was believed to be pretty good". Blainey argued that both such accounts of Australian history were inaccurate: "The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced.".[20]

The lecture was subsequently published in the political and literary journal, Quadrant,[21] which at the time was edited by Robert Manne and is now edited by Keith Windschuttle, two of the leading "history warriors", albeit on opposing sides of the debate. The phrase then began to be used by some commentators pejoratively to describe historians viewed as writing excessively critical Australian history 'while wearing a black armband' of "mourning and grieving, or shame". New interpretations of Australia's history since 1788 were contested for focussing almost exclusively on official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession and culturalgenocide and ignoring positive aspects of Australia's history.[9]Manning Clark was named by Blainey in his 1993 speech as having "done much to spread the gloomy view and also the compassionate view with his powerful prose and Old Testament phrases."[21]

The 'black armband' view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. [...] I believe that the balance sheet of our history is one of heroic achievement and that we have achieved much more as a nation of which we can be proud than of which we should be ashamed. In saying that I do not exclude or ignore specific aspects of our past where we are rightly held to account. Injustices were done in Australia and no-one should obscure or minimise them. [...] But [...] our priority should [...] [be] to commit to a practical program of action that will remove the enduring legacies of disadvantage.[22]

”

In 2009, Howard's successor Kevin Rudd also called for moving away from a black-arm view:

“

Time to leave behind us the polarisation that began to infect our every discussion of our nation's past. To go beyond the so-called "black arm" view that refused to confront some hard truths about our past, as if our forebears were all men and women of absolute nobility, without spot or blemish. But time, too, to go beyond the view that we should only celebrate the reformers, the renegades and revolutionaries, thus neglecting or even deriding the great stories of our explorers, of our pioneers, and of our entrepreneurs. Any truthful reflection of our nation's past is that these are all part of the rich fabric of our remarkable story...[23]

”

Stephen Muecke, currently Professor of Writing at the University of New South Wales, contributed to the debate by arguing that black armband events bring people together in common remembrance and cited Anzac Day as an example; while Aboriginal lawyer Noel Pearson argued that whilst there was much that is worth preserving in the cultural heritage of non-Aboriginal Australia, "To say that ordinary Australians who are part of the national community today do not have any connection with the shameful aspects of our past is at odds with our exhortations that they have connections to the prideful bits"[24]

The notion of the 'white blindfold' view of history entered the debate as a pejorative counter-response to the notion of the "blackarmband school".[25][26][27]

In his book Why Weren't We Told? in 1999, Henry Reynolds referred to Stanner's "Great Australian Silence", and to "a 'mental block' which prevented Australians from coming to terms with the past".[28] He argued that the silence about Australia's history of frontier violence in much of the twentieth century stands in stark contrast with the openness with which violence was admitted and discussed in the nineteenth. Reynolds quotes many excerpts from the press, including an article written in the Townsville Herald in Queensland as late as 1907, by a "pioneer" who described his part in a massacre. Reynolds commented that violence against Aboriginals, far from being hushed up or denied, was openly talked about.

The nature of the debate began to change in 1999 with the publication of a book Massacre Myth by journalist, Rod Moran, who examined the 1926 Forrest River massacre in Western Australia. Moran concluded that the massacre was a myth inspired by the false claims of a missionary (possibly as a result of mental health issues).[29] The principal historian of the Forrest River massacre, Neville Green, describes the massacre as probable but not able to be proven in court.[30]Keith Windschuttle, an Australian historian, said that reviewing Moran's book inspired his own examination of the wider historical record.[31] Windschuttle argues that much of Australian Aboriginal history, particularly as written since the late 1970s, was based on the use of questionable or unreliable evidence and on deliberate misrepresentation and fabrication of historical evidence. He based his conclusions on his examination of the evidence cited in previous historical accounts and reported incidences of non-existent documents being cited, misquoting and misleadingly selective quoting from documents and of documents being cited as evidence that certain events took place when his examination concluded that they do not support those claims. Windschuttle reported his conclusions in a number of articles published in Quadrant and in 2002, he published a book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1, Van Diemen’s Land 1803 - 1847, which focussed on Tasmanian colonial history.

Historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in a 2003 book review of Fabrication,[32] that the number of instances when the source documents do not support the claims made and the fact that the divergences overwhelmingly tend to support claims of violent conflict and massacres indicates that this is not a matter of mere error but bias.

The debate had therefore changed from an argument over whether there was an excessive focus on negative aspects of Australian history to one over to what extent, if at all, Australian Aboriginal history had been based on questionable evidence or had been falsified or fabricated and whether this had exaggerated the extent of violence against Aborigines. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Lyndall Ryan and Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle's naming of historians whom he accused of misrepresentation and fabrication of the historical evidence, created considerable controversy and produced a range of responses including condemnation of as well as support for his work.[33][34][35][36][37]

The case for using the term "Australian genocide" rests on evidence from various sources that people argue proves some form of genocide. People cite the list of massacres of indigenous Australians by white settlers, mainly in the 19th century (cf. Blood on the Wattle by Bruce Elder or Frontier History Revisited by Robert Orsted-Jensen); only a few massacres were documented, and the evidence is strong that evidence of massacres was generally covered by secrecy and there are powerful signs that documents had been destroyed. Evidence is solid that Queensland's Native Police produced diaries, collision reports and monthly and quarterly enumerations of 'patrols' and 'collisions' with indigenous people, and that all of this material was stored in the Queensland police department. Yet not one single sheet of information of this kind which is today available at the Queensland State archive originate from files delivered by the police department, the material left comes solely from other government offices. Only human interference can produce a total loss of the vast Native Police Force records once stored in the Queensland Police Department[38]

Others have pointed to the dramatic reduction in the Tasmanian Aboriginal population in the 19th century and the forced removal of generations of Aboriginal children from their parents during the 20th century as evidence of genocide. The evidence includes documentation of the wish sometimes intention of a significant proportion of late 19th-century and early 20th-century white Australians to see the Aboriginal "race" eliminated. Documents include published letters to the editors of high-circulation newspapers. Certainly this was the case in Queensland, in terms of indigenous people the most populated section of Australia and certainly the colony with the most violent frontier. In June 1866 Sir Robert Herbert summing up his experience after little more than five years as the first Premier of this colony wrote:

“

Every method of dealing with these very dangerous savages has been tried, and I believe no more satisfactory system can be devised than that under which the people of Queensland endeavour to deal with a difficulty which it is feared can never terminate except with the gradual disappearance of the unimprovable race.[39]

”

The mentioned "system", for which Herbert was among the people personal responsible, was the so-called "Native Police system" which typically went about "dispersing" any sign of indigenous resistance at the frontier by use of deadly early morning attacks on Aboriginal camps. This semi-military force was allowed to go about its business, typically instigating large scale deadly retaliation without prior investigating of alleged crime. They generally took no prisoners at the frontier and there are no signs that they ever enforced any other "law" than "might is right". It was a force designed more in the manner of the recent times phenomenon known as the "death-squad" and the secrecy of its operations was ensured by the remoteness of its operations, added a system that denied the evidence from "blacks" while the force itself was instructed to ensure that there would always be only one white witness, the officer in charge of each detachment. Recently the first ever attempt to scientifically calculate the amount of Aborigines killed in encounters with the Native Police indicates that numbers may exceed 45,000.[40]

The phrase "useless race" was commonly expressed in Queensland such as in 1877 when an editorial in the leading journal noted that,

“

The desire for progressive advancement and substantial prosperity is, after all, stronger than sentimental dislike to the extinction of a savage and useless race.[41]

”

Classifying Aboriginal people as a useless or improvable race was common. Comprehensively debating the native police ad the frontier in public in 1880 in the columns of the Queenslander (the weekly edition of the colony's leading journal), one could read the following statements from yet another prominent settler,

“

And being a useless race, what does it matter what they suffer any more than the distinguished philanthropist who writes in this behalf cares for the wounded half dead pigeon he tortures at his shooting matches.[42]

”

Remarks which was followed up in October of that years by Boyd Dunlop Morehead, one of the leading landholders, manager of the Scottish Australian Investment Co.'s Bowen Downs in 1866-81 and a future Premier, could be heard making the following acknowledgement in a parliamentary speech, saying, yes settlers in the past did go

“

…out, and in their pioneering had, of necessity, to use extreme measures to the inhabitants of the soil. The aboriginal, no doubt, had been shot down; no one denied it…this race was being worked off the face of the earth. That that was so everyone knew, and that it must be so, none would deny…For his own part he did not believe that the aboriginal race was worth preserving. If there were no aboriginals it would be a very good thing…[43]

”

After the introduction of the word genocide in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin, Lemkin himself and most comparative scholars of genocide and many general historians, such as Robert Hughes, Ward Churchill, Leo Kuper and Jared Diamond, basing their analysis on previously published histories, present the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines as a text book example of a genocide.[44] The Australian historian of genocide, Ben Kiernan, in his recent history of the concept and practice, Blood and soil: a world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur, (2007) treats the Australian evidence over the first century of colonization as an example of genocide.[45]

Among scholars specializing in Australian history much recent debate has focused on whether indeed what happened to groups of Aborigines, and especially the Tasmanian Aborigines during the European colonisation of Australia can be classified as genocide. According to Mark Levene, most Australian experts are now "considerably more circumspect".[46] In the specific instance of the Tasmanian Aborigines Henry Reynolds, who takes events in other regions of colonial Australia as marked by "genocidal moments",[47] argues that the records show that British administrative policy in Tasmania was explicitly concerned to avoid extermination, however practices the events on the ground that lead to the virtual extinction worked out.[48] Tony Barta, John Docker and Anne Curthoys however emphasize Lemkin's linkage between colonization and genocide.[49] Barta, an Australian expert in German history, argued from Lemkin that, "there is no dispute that the basic fact of Australian history is the appropriation of the continent by an invading people and the dispossession, with ruthless destructiveness, of another".[50] Docker argues that, "(w)e ignore Lemkin's wide-ranging definition of genocide, inherently linked with colonialism, at our peril".[51] Curthoys argues that the separation between international and local Australian approaches has been deleterious. While calling for "a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship",[52] her own view is that the Tasmanian instance constitutes a "case for genocide, though not of state planning, mass killing, or extinction".[53]

Much of the debate on whether European colonisation of Australia resulted in genocide, centres on whether "the term 'genocide' only applies to cases of deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or ... might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers".[54] Historians such as Tony Barta argue that for the victim group it matters little if they were wiped out as part of a planned attack. If a group is decimated as a result of smallpox introduced to Australia by British settlers, or introduced European farming methods causing a group of Aborigines to starve to death, the result is, in his opinion, genocide.[55]

Henry Reynolds points out that European colonists and their descendants frequently use expressions that included "extermination", "extinction", and "extirpation" when discussing the treatment of Aborigines during the colonial period, and as in his opinion genocide "can take many forms, not all of them violent"[56] this is an indicator of genocide. Janine Roberts has argued that genocide was Australian policy, even if only by omission. She notes that despite contemporary newspapers regularly decrying, "the barbarous crop of exterminators," and, "a system of native slaughter... merciless and complete", the government contended that "no illegal acts were occurring", with the worst incidents being described as merely "indiscretions".[57]

The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and other historians such as Keith Windschuttle disagree and think that no genocide took place.[58][59] Minogue does not try to define genocide but argues that its use is an extreme manifestation of the guilt felt by modern Australian society about the past misconduct of their society to Aborigines. In his opinion its use reflects the process by which Australian society is trying to come to terms with its past wrongs and in doing this Australians are stretching the meaning of genocide to fit within this internal debate.[60]

In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote further on the topic of genocide. He wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like "driv[ing] the original inhabitants off the land... confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers... Tak[ing] indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst... assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names."[61]

The arrival of smallpox in Australia is of uncertain origin and is a major theme in the history wars. The lack of immunity among Aboriginal Australians to this introduced disease saw it inflict a devastating toll on the Aboriginal population. Though the First Fleet itself did not arrive with any known carriers of the disease, the observation of an epidemic among the Aboriginal population of Sydney around 16 months after the British arrived has led to speculation that the Fleet itself brought this disease to Australia. Some historians have suggested that the disease may have been either released by accident or theft of medicine stores or perhaps been deliberately employed as a form of "germ warfare" against indigenous Australians. Inoculation was thus commonly practised by surgeons decades before 1796 and the process of smallpox vaccination was introduced by Edward Jenner. Dried scab was commonly stored in glass containers as part of a surgeons remedies.[62]

Early speculation on the origins of the disease is recorded in the writing of a First Fleet Captain of Marines, Watkin Tench, who noted an "extraordinary calamity" among the Aborigines of Sydney, beginning in April 1789. Repeated accounts of dead bodies marked with pustules consistent with smallpox began being reported around Sydney Harbour around this time. Tench wrote that the colonists' observations had led them to suppose that smallpox was not known in New South Wales and as no First Fleeters had suffered from the disease, its sudden existence among the Aborigines was "inexplicable". Tench speculated as to whether the disease might be indigenous to the country; or whether it had been brought to the colony by the French expedition of Lapérouse a year before; traversed the continent from the West where Europeans had previously landed; brought by expedition of James Cook; or indeed by the first British settlers at Sydney. "Our surgeons brought out varioulous matter in bottles", he wrote, "but to infer that it was produced from this cause were a supposition so wild as to be unworthy of consideration".[63]

Subsequently, and despite the lack of certainty over how or when the disease reached Australia, there has been a history war regarding the way that smallpox arrived in Australia, especially whether it was deliberately used as a crude biological weapon against indigenous peoples.

Medical scientists such as Sir Edward Stirling and Sir John Cleland published a number of books and articles between 1911 and 1966 suggesting that smallpox arrived in Northern Australia from an Asian source.[64]

A rival theory, that smallpox was introduced to NSW in 1789 by British settlers, was put forward in 1914 by the director of the Australian Quarantine Service, Dr. J. H. L. Cumpston.[65]

In 1983, Professor Noel Butlin, an economic historian, suggested: "it is possible and, in 1789, likely, that infection of the Aborigines was a deliberate extermination act". Historians David Day and Henry Reynolds repeated Butlin’s claims and in 2001 Reynolds wrote: "one possibility is that the epidemic was deliberately or accidentally let loose by someone in the settlement at Sydney Cove. Not surprisingly this is a highly contentious proposition. If true, it would clearly fall within the ambit of the Genocide Convention".[66] Butlin argued that while Macassan fishermen could possibly 'have landed the virus on the Australian mainland at some stage their ability to do so was limited'.[67] It is furthermore highly unlikely, he argued, that this virus should have been brought down from the Gulf of Carpentaria to coincidence with the first major outbreak "just fifteen months after the landing of the first fleet". Besides the time factor connected to Macassans, 'over seven or eight weeks (or more)', the type of vessels, the limited potential for contact between Aborigines and fishermen, and the fact of clothing as carrier and virus is destroyed or seriously reduced in contact with salt water, makes the Macassan theory highly unlikely, he argued. Indeed, infected 'Macassans would be either dead or fully recovered long before reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria.[68] Whereas transfer somehow, theft accident or the like, from scab originally stored in glass containers carried by just one of the seven medical officers on the first fleet seems the most likely cause.[69] In the words of Judy Campbell: “British historian Charles Wilson used medical microbiology to disagree completely with Butlin about a European origin in 1789, and doubted his estimates of its demographic impact. [...] First Fleet historian Alan Frost also disagreed with Butlin’s views" [70]

Australian virologist Frank Fenner, an authority on smallpox and principal author of a major 1988 World Health Organization report, Smallpox and its Eradication, stated that it was not possible for smallpox to have survived the long voyage from England, let alone the following 15 months, after which the first cases were seen among Aboriginal people.

Butlin's argument was reiterated by David Day in his 2001 book Claiming a Continent A New History of Australia, which suggested that members of Sydney's garrison of Royal Marines may have attempted to use smallpox as a biological weapon in 1789.[72] In 2002, John Connor stated that Day's theory was "unsustainable".[73]

In a 2002 book, Invisible Invaders, historian Judy Campbell – advised by Fenner – reviewed reports of disease amongst Aboriginal people from 1780–1880, including the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, the 1830s and the 1860s. Campbell argues that the evidence, including that contained in these reports shows that, while many diseases such as tuberculosis were introduced by British colonists, this was not so for smallpox and that the speculations of British responsibility made by other historians were based on tenuous evidence, largely on the mere coincidence that the 1789-90 epidemic was first observed afflicting the Aborigines not long after the establishment of the first British settlement. Campbell argues instead that the north-south route of transmission of the 1860s epidemics (which is generally agreed), also applied in the earlier ones. Campbell noted that the fleets of fast Macassan fishing vessels, propelled by monsoonal winds, reached Australia after being at sea for as little as ten to fifteen days, well within the incubation period of smallpox. The numbers of people travelling in the fleets were large enough to sustain smallpox for extended periods of time without it ‘burning out’. The Macassans spent up to six months fishing along the northern Australian coastline and Aboriginal people had “day-to-day contact with the islanders. Aboriginals visited the praus and the camps the visitors set up on shore, they talked and traded…” [74] She also notes that Butlin, writing in 1983, “did not recognize that Aboriginals were "great travellers", who spread infection over long distances….” and that smallpox was spread through their extensive social and trading contacts as well as by Aborigines fleeing from the disease.[75]

Christopher Warren (2007) has claimed, in regard to the 1789 outbreak that Fenner did not specifically address did not address the survivability of variolous material brought in bottles by the First Fleet from England.[76] that, though degraded, it could still infect highly susceptible people with smallpox. Smallpox spread by the inhalation of airborne droplets of virus in situations of personal contact or by contact with blankets, clothing or other objects that an infected person had recently used.[77] This material was carried by First Fleet surgeons for inoculation purposes. Warren also suggested that Frost's view was based on a false premise: that the First Fleet's stocks of virus were sterilised by summer heat.

Historians Craig Mear (2008) and Michael Bennett (2009) have disputed Campbell's hypothesis that smallpox was introduced to Australia in 1789 through contact between Aboriginal people and mariners from Makassar.[78][79][80]

H. A. Willis (2010), in a survey of much of the literature discussed above, reiterated the argument made by Campbell.[81] In response, Warren (2011) suggested that Willis had not taken into account research on how heat affects the smallpox virus, cited by the World Health Organization.[82] In reply, Willis (2011) reiterated that his position was supported by a closer reading of Frank Fenner’s report to the World Health Organization (1988) and invited readers to consult that report online.[83][84] In 2011, Macknight re-entered the debate, declaring: “The overwhelming probability must be that it [smallpox] was introduced, like the later epidemics, by [Macassan] trepangers on the north coast and spread across the continent to arrive in Sydney quite independently of the new settlement there.”[85]

In 2013, Warren reviewed the history of the 1789 outbreak and, following Mear and Bennett, claimed that: there was no evidence of a major outbreak of smallpox in Macassar before 1789;[86] there were no indigenous trade routes suitable for transmission to Port Jackson;[87] the Makassan theory is contradicted by Aboriginal oral tradition,[88] and; 1824 was the earliest point at there was evidence that Makassans had been the source of a smallpox outbreak in Australia.[89]

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Summary of Research on First Fleet Smallpox - ABC Radio National Program - Ockhams Razor - 2014 Podcast - 13 minutes

Prior to the publication of Warren's article (2013), John Carmody argued that the epidemic was an outbreak of chickenpox which took a drastic toll on an Aboriginal population without immunological resistance. With regard to smallpox, Dr Carmody said: "There is absolutely no evidence to support any of the theories and some of them are fanciful and far-fetched.." [90][91] Warren covered the chickenpox theory at endnote 3 of Smallpox at Sydney Cove - Who, When, Why?[92] and refuted it in United Service, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute of New South Wales, vol. 65 (1), March 2014, pg. 7.[93]

Despite the lengthy and detailed findings set out in the 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the Stolen Generation, which documented the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by Australian State and Federal government agencies and church missions, the nature and extent of the removals have been disputed within Australia, with some commentators questioning the findings contained in the report and asserting that the Stolen Generation has been exaggerated. Sir Ronald Wilson, former President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission and a Commissioner on the Inquiry, has stated that none of the more than 500 witnesses who appeared before the Inquiry were cross-examined. This has been the basis of criticism by the Coalition Government[94] and by the anthropologist Ron Brunton in a booklet[95] published by the Institute of Public Affairs that was criticised in turn by the lawyer Hal Wootten.[96] An Australian Federal Government submission has questioned the conduct of the Commission which produced the report, arguing that the Commission failed to critically appraise or test the claims on which it based the report and failed to distinguish between those separated from their families "with and without consent, and with and without good reason". Not only has the number of children removed from their parents been questioned, but also the intent and effects of the government policy.[97]

Some critics, such as Andrew Bolt, have questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt stated that it is a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children. Robert Manne responded that Bolt did not address the documentary evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generations and that this is a clear case of historicaldenialism.[98] Bolt then challenged Manne to produce ten cases in which the evidence justified the claim that children were "stolen" as opposed to having been removed for reasons such as neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc. He argued that Manne did not respond and that this was an indication of unreliability of the claim that there was policy of systematic removal.[99] In reply, Manne stated that he supplied a documented list of 250 names[100][101] Bolt stated that prior to a debate, Manne provided him with a list of 12 names that he was able to show during the debate was "a list of people abandoned, saved from abuse or voluntarily given up by their parents"; and that during the actual debate, Manne produced a list of 250 names without any details or documentation as to their circumstances. Bolt also stated that he was subsequently able to identify and ascertain the history of some of those on the list and was unable to find a case where there was evidence to justify the term ‘stolen’. He stated that one of the names on the list of allegedly stolen children was 13-year-old Dolly, taken into the care of the State after being "found seven months pregnant and penniless, working for nothing on a station".[102]

The Bolt/Manne debate is a fair sample of the adversarial debating style in the area. There is focus on individual examples as evidence for or against the existence of a policy, and little or no analysis of other documentary evidence such as legislative databases showing how the legal basis for removal varied over time and between jurisdictions,[103] or testimony from those who were called on to implement the policies,[104] which was also recorded in the Bringing Them Home report. A recent review of legal cases claims it is difficult for Stolen Generation claimants to challenge what was written about their situation at the time of removal.[105]

The report also identified instances of official misrepresentation and deception, such as when caring and able parents were incorrectly described by Aboriginal Protection Officers as not being able to properly provide for their children, or when parents were told by government officials that their children had died, even though this was not the case.

The new Australian Government elected in 2007 issued an Apology similar to those that State Governments had issued at or about the time of the [Bringing Them Home] report ten years earlier. On 13 February 2008, Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia moved a formal apology in the House of Representatives,[106] which was moved concurrently by the Leader of the Government in the Senate.[107] It passed unanimously in the House of Representatives on 13 March 2008.[108] In the Senate the Australian Greens moved an amendment seeking to add compensation to the apology, against which all other parties voted, after which the motion was passed unanimously.[109]

In 2002, historian Keith Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847, questions the historical evidence used to identify the number of Aborigines deliberately killed during European colonisation, especially focusing on the Black War in Tasmania. He argues that there is credible evidence for the violent deaths of only 118 Tasmanian Aborigines, as having been directly killed by the British, although there were undoubtedly an unquantifiable number of other deaths for which no evidence exists. He argues that the Tasmanian Aboriginal population was devastated by a lethal cocktail of introduced diseases to which they had little or no resistance due to their isolation from the mainland and the rest of humanity for thousands of years. The deaths and infertility caused by these introduced diseases, combined with the deaths from what violent conflict there was, rapidly decimated the relatively small Aboriginal population. Windschuttle also examined the nature of those violent episodes that did occur and concluded that there is no credible evidence of warfare over territory. Windschuttle argues that the primary source of conflict between the British and the Aborigines was raids by Aborigines, often involving violent attacks on settlers, to acquire goods (such as blankets, metal implements and 'exotic' foods) from the British. With this and with a detailed examination of footnotes in and evidence cited by the earlier historical works, he criticises the claims by historians such as Henry Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan that there was a campaign of guerrilla warfare against British settlement. Particular historians and histories that are challenged include Henry Reynolds and the histories of massacres, particularly in Tasmania (such as in the Cape Grim massacre) but also elsewhere in Australia. Windschuttle's claims are based upon the argument that the 'orthodox' view of Australian history were founded on hearsay or the misleading use of evidence by historians.

Windschuttle argues that, in order to advance the ‘deliberate genocide’ argument, Reynolds has misused source documentation, including that from British colonist sources, by quoting out of context. In particular, he accuses Reynolds of selectively quoting from responses to an 1830 survey in Tasmania in that Reynolds quoted only from those responses that could be construed as advocating "extermination", "extinction", and "extirpation" and failed to mention other responses to the survey, which indicated that a majority of respondents rejected genocide, were sympathetic to the plight of the Aborigines, feared that conflict arising from Aboriginal attacks upon settlers would result in the extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines and advocated the adoption of courses of action to prevent this happening.[110]

Windschuttle's claims and research have been disputed by some historians, in Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, an anthology including contributions from Henry Reynolds and Professor Lyndall Ryan, edited and introduced by Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University. This anthology, has itself been the subject of examination by Melbourne businessman, freelance writer and Objectivist John Dawson, in Washout: On the academic response to The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, which argues that "Whitewash" leaves Windschuttle's claims and research unrefuted.[111]

In "Contra Windschuttle", an article published in the conservative publication Quadrant, S.G. Foster examined some of the evidence that Windschuttle presented on one issue, Stanner's notion of the "Great Australian Silence". In Foster’s opinion, the evidence produced by Windschuttle did not prove his case that the "Great Australian Silence" was largely a myth. Windschuttle argues that, in the years prior to Stanner’s 1968 Boyer lecture, Australian historians had not been silent on the Aborigines although, in most cases, the historians’ "discussions were not to Stanner’s taste" and the Aborigines "might not have been treated in the way Reynolds and his colleagues would have liked".[112] Foster argues that Windschuttle is "merciless with those who get their facts wrong" and that the fact that Windschuttle has also made a mistake[113] means that he did not meet the criteria that he used to assess 'orthodox historians' he was arguing against and whom he accused of deliberately and extensively misrepresenting, misquoting, exaggerating and fabricating evidence relating to the level and nature of violent conflict between Aborigines and white settlers.[114]

At the time of the publication of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One it was announced that a second volume, to be published in 2003, would cover claims of frontier violence in New South Wales and Queensland, and a third, in 2004, would cover Western Australia.[115] On 9 February 2008, however, it was announced that the second volume, anticipated to be published later in 2008, would be entitled The Fabrication of Australian History, Volume 2: The "Stolen Generations" and would address the issue of the removal of Aboriginal children (the "stolen generations") from their families in the 20th century.[116]

The new volume was released in January 2010, now listed as Volume 3, with a statement that Volumes 2 and 4 would appear later.[117] Announcing the publication, Windschuttle claimed that the film Rabbit-Proof Fence had misrepresented the child removal at the centre of the story, and offered inaccurate accounts of Molly's journey as it was recounted by her daughter, Doris Pilkington. These claims were subsequently rejected by the makers of the film.[118]

In 2003 Australian historian Stuart Macintyre published The History Wars, written with Anna Clark.[119] This was a study of the background of, and arguments surrounding, recent developments in Australian historiography, and concluded that the History Wars had done damage to the nature of objective Australian history. At the launch of his book, historian Stuart Macintyre emphasised the political dimension of these arguments[120] and said the Australian debate took its cue from the Enola Gay controversy in the United States.[121] The book was launched by former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who took the opportunity to criticise conservative views of Australian history, and those who hold them (such as the then Prime Minister John Howard), saying that they suffered from "a failure of imagination", and said that The History Wars "rolls out the canvas of this debate."[122] Macintyre's critics, such as Greg Melluish (History Lecturer at the University of Wollongong), responded to the book by declaring that Macintyre was a partisan history warrior himself, and that "its primary arguments are derived from the pro-Communist polemics of the Cold War."[123] Keith Windschuttle said that Macintyre attempted to "caricature the history debate."[124] In a foreword to the book, former Chief Justice of Australia Sir Anthony Mason said that the book was "a fascinating study of the recent endeavours to rewrite or reinterpret the history of European settlement in Australia."[125]

In 2001, writing in Quadrant, historian Keith Windshuttle argued that the then-new National Museum of Australia (NMA) was marred by "political correctness" and did not present a balanced view of the nation's history.[126] In 2003 the Howard Government commissioned a review of the NMA. A potentially controversial issue was in assessing how well the NMA met the criterion that displays should: "Cover darker historical episodes, and with a gravity that opens the possibility of collective self-accounting. The role here is in helping the nation to examine fully its own past, and the dynamic of its history—with truthfulness, sobriety and balance. This extends into covering present-day controversial issues."[127] While the report concluded that there was no systemic bias, it recommended that there be more recognition in the exhibits of European achievements.[128]

The report drew the ire of some historians in Australia, who claimed that it was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Government to politicise the museum and move it more towards a position which Geoffrey Blainey called the 'three cheers' view of Australian history, rather than the 'black armband' view.[129] In 2006 columnist Miranda Devine described some of the Braille messages encoded on the external structure of the NMA, including "sorry" and "forgive us our genocide" and how they had been covered over by aluminium discs in 2001, and stated that under the new Director "what he calls the 'black T-shirt' view of Australian culture" is being replaced by "systematically reworking the collections, with attention to 'scrupulous historical accuracy'".[130]

An example of the current approach at the NMA is the Bells Falls Gorge Interactive display, which presents Windshuttles's view of an alleged massacre alongside other views and contemporary documents and displays of weapons relating to colonial conflict around Bathurst in 1824 and invites visitors to make up their own minds.[131]

The "history wars" are widely viewed, by external observers and participants on both sides as an extension of the "culture war" originating in the United States. William D. Rubinstein, writing for the conservative British think tank the Social Affairs Unit, refers to the history wars as "the Culture War down under".[132] Participants in the debate including Keith Windschuttle and Robert Manne are frequently described as "culture warriors" for their respective points of view.[133][134]

^M. McKenna, (10 November 1997), Research Paper 5 1997-98: "Different Perspectives on Black Armband History, Parliament of Australia, Parliamentary Library[dead link] 'To some extent my generation was reared on the Three Cheers view of history. This patriotic view of our past had a long run. It saw Australian history as largely a success. While the convict era was a source of shame or unease, nearly everything that came after was believed to be pretty good. There is a rival view, which I call the Black Armband view of history. In recent years it has assailed the optimistic view of history. The black armbands were quietly worn in official circles in 1988. The multicultural folk busily preached their message that until they arrived much of Australian history was a disgrace. The past treatment of Aborigines, of Chinese, of Kanakas, of non-British migrants, of women, the very old, the very young, and the poor was singled out, sometimes legitimately, sometimes not. My friend and undergraduate teacher Manning Clark, who was almost the official historian in 1988, had done much to spread the gloomy view and also the compassionate view with his powerful prose and Old Testament phrases. The Black Armband view of history might well represent the swing of the pendulum from a position that had been too favourable, too self congratulatory, to an opposite extreme that is even more unreal and decidedly jaundiced'

^Evans, Raymond & Ørsted–Jensen, Robert: 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier” (paper at AHA 9 July 2014 at University of Queensland) publisher Social Science Research Network

^Debates on Genocide - Part One Debates on 'Genocide' in Australian History, Australian Government Department of Education Science and Training. citing Tony Barta, Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia, in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, Isidor Wallimann & Michael N. Dobkowski (eds.), New York, Westport, Connecticut, London, Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 237-251.

^Macknight, Campbell "The view from Marege’: Australian knowledge of Macassar and the impact of the trepang industry across two centuries " in Aboriginal History | publication-date=2011 | volume=35 | pages=121–143.

^Using records from Macassan hospitals established by the then Dutch East India Company plus the results of research by P Boomgaard reported in his "Smallpox and Vaccination in Java 1780-1860: Medical Data as a Source for demographic History" in Dutch medicine in the Malay Archipelago 1816-1941 : articles presented at a symposium held in honor of Prof. Dr. D. de Moulin on the occasion of his retirement ... (1989)

Curthoys, Ann (2008). "Genocide in Tasmania: The History of an Idea". In Moses, A. Dirk. Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history. Studies on war and genocide 12. Berghahn Books. pp. 229-252. ISBN978-1-84545-452-4.

Evans, Raymond & Ørsted–Jensen, Robert: 'I Cannot Say the Numbers that Were Killed': Assessing Violent Mortality on the Queensland Frontier (paper at AHA 9 July 2014 at University of Queensland) publisher Social Science Research Network (SSRN)[6]

Gould, Bob. McGuinness, Windschuttle and Quadrant: The attempt to revise the history of the massacre of Aborigines on the British colonial frontier in Australia. (Annotated bibliography of colonial history).